Blog post
Update on OA Books Pilot - OA Switchboard assesses next steps as the pilot completes in 2025
In the summer of 2023, we announced that OA Switchboard had kicked-off a project, with a Working Group, to explore an OA Books solution to simplify the sharing of information between stakeholders about OA book publications throughout the whole publication journey. In this January 2025 blogpost we are happy to report on preliminary findings, initial conclusions to the key questions tested, and our next steps.
How it all began
There is increased awareness for OA Books, and more and more research funders and institutions are developing OA Books policies. This is leading to a complex landscape with a multitude of overlapping business models, agreements, policies, and systems, which has already started to pose serious implementation challenges. This is where the OA Switchboard Books solution comes in (see blog post December 2023).
During 2024, we prepared a working model (‘prototype’) for a ‘message hub’ to support two OA Books specific use cases. This prototype was to enable publishers to send pre-publication eligibility enquiry messages (BE1-message) to research funders and institutions, who in turn can respond with a reply (BE2-message). It would also allow for publication notification messages (BP1-message) to be sent by publishers to research funders and institutions. These BP1-messages contain rich and detailed book metadata that can be ingested in other systems (e.g. repositories), used for analysis, to monitor policy compliance, for further reporting, and more.
What were the goals of the project?
The intended OA Books solution is to ultimately enhance workflows, increase the visibility of OA Book publications, support OA book policies, and facilitate integration with the increasingly complex open access research and publishing ecosystem.
Generally, as an intermediary, the OA Switchboard provides a safe space for exchange of publication metadata and simplifies the sharing of information between publishers, institutions and funders, thereby reducing the transactional cost for stakeholders.
A collaborative approach in developing the prototype and preparing for the pilot
Through a UXD-driven design approach, in combination with many 1-to-1 and group meetings, we shaped and refined the use cases, defined the message types and the data fields, and designed the online forms and user journey. In parallel we invited pilot users and they helped to develop a pilot user agreement.
We were very grateful that sponsors committed to financially support the initiative, enabling it to be run with no charge for the pilot users.
During the first months of 2024, our development partner finalised the prototype and the Working Group prepared for the pilot,bringing in more pilot users, and refining the goals and approach.
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The pilot was launched in February 2024 and involved pilot users testing the system by:
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Publishers manually preparing and sending ‘messages’, of the types BE1 and BP1.
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Research funders and institutions reviewing these messages sent to them, and responding to valid BE1-messages, by sending a BE2 message.
The pilot was evaluated in Fall 2024 and delivered preliminary findings
After a few months of testing by the pilot users, interviews were conducted in Fall 2024 to find out:
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If the vision for a solution for OA Books was relevant and sound.
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If there is a business case to progress from a prototype to a full-fledged solution for OA books.
The interviews were conducted by Dev Kumar (development partner, Intelligence Beyond Inc.) and Yvonne Campfens on behalf of OA Switchboard. The interview findings, survey analysis and important verbatim comments are being captured in a full report planned for later this year, however there are some clear indicators:
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Low volume of transactions: The limited number of OA books currently justifies manual workflows over centralized systems. Pilot users would have wanted to test more with real data. “You are too early with this OA Books solution”
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The prototype was very user-friendly and guided the user journey well: The UXD-driven design approach paid-off. It also showed that if/when volume went up, a publisher would want to be able to automatically upload metadata from their own systems (no manual entry). We also learned that book ‘chapters’ are very similar to journal ‘articles’, when it comes to relevant types of metadata fields.
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The data model contained too many, sometimes ambiguous, fields: Throughout the development and pilot itself we learned about the diversity in terminology and lack of standardization. “Book publishing is not big on definitions”
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The practical benefit of the BP1-message was clearly seen: We learned that many publishers already produce and distribute so-called ONIX feeds (XML), for a very different purpose (commercial supply chain). These are often transformed into MARC-records for use in libraries, but can also be converted into JSON format to be sent via an OA Switchboard books solution.
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The benefit of BE1-BE2 messages was more theoretical and diverse across disciplines.
We can draw initial conclusions to the key questions tested
The information gained from the pilot users and the interviews has already enabled us to make some initial conclusions regarding need and timings of this OA books solution:
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The vision for an OA Books solution is fundamentally sound and relevant.
Stakeholders consistently affirmed the importance of addressing workflow inefficiencies, standardized metadata exchange and creating a scalable open infrastructure to support OA books. -
There is cautious optimism regarding the business case for transitioning from a prototype to a long-term solution.
Low transaction volumes and lack of policy mandates reduce the immediate demand for a centralized system. Institutions and publishers noted that manual processes remain manageable at current volumes. Metadata inconsistencies and the absence of automation further undermine scalability.
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What’s next?
Our next step is to meet with our Working Group and pilot users as a group, to evaluate the findings and initial conclusions. We will then also review and discuss draft recommendations, as derived from the pilot or even specifically suggested by pilot users. We will provide further updates when this work is complete before Summer 2025.